


long to die with you

by ilia



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Devotion, Established Relationship, F/M, Mentioned Blood and Gore, Pegging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:59:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27763381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilia/pseuds/ilia
Summary: Edelgard prepares a surprise for Hubert.-In those dark corners of the library, Hubert von Vestra taught her that it is right to want the power to which she is entitled. In Edelgard’s bed, he continued their lessons.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39





	long to die with you

**Author's Note:**

> Decided to write Edelbert pegging and it became an actual story, oh well. Enjoy, my darlings.
> 
> -
> 
> _although I never write, secretly_   
>  _I long to die with you,_   
>  _does that count?_
> 
> Franz Wright

It begins an evening that at outward glance might seem just like any other; an innocuous sundown, the mere asterisk upon another war-bloodied day of Adrestian rule. The sickle of moon hangs low enough in the skies to scrape the tended crop fields clean. Edelgard, retired from the public areas of Enbarr’s Keep, shuffles papers in her quarters.

The quarters are not meanial, as no Emperor’s rooms should rightly be. Surfaces glint with metals imbued into fine cherry woods; the carpet is a deep-set scarlet as though emulating in itself the pooling blood of the acting Emperor’s many enemies. Even the seat upon whose edge Edelgard is perched has elegance and diligence carved into the design of its sturdy back and thoughtful arms. They are the sort of surroundings that speak to the hefty burden thrust upon the shoulders of its occupant; intended for work above play, duty above leisure. 

Upon retiring to her quarters, it is often that Edelgard bring her work with her. Things are no different this evening. The papers laid across the table bear a delicate scrawl that swims in front of Edelgard’s tired eyes; her fingernails, scrubbed clean from her rigorous practice from the axe just that dawn, tap an uneasy motion upon the glinting table. As she writes, those same fingers coil up the length of her torso. They ease and massage at her neck.

(One tiresome knot for every Adrestian life she very welll may fail, she thinks offhandedly.)

Her advisors and the people of Adrestia wait for Edelgard in the burdensome papers laid in front of her that evening, a series of tirelessly rigorous and equally crucial documents that might just determine the outcome of this exhaustive war. The people of Adrestia await Edelgard.

But tonight, Edelgard awaits Hubert.

Perhaps he is the reason for the impatient shifting of her practiced poise that evening, the weight of the room laid particularly heavily upon Edelgard’s battle-trained shoulders. Perhaps it is the memory of a look shared between them both from just that afternoon, still tangled in the threads of Edelgard’s consciousness. The flurry of feeling in her gut saturated and intense as their eyes had met. As they had sat side-by-side within the war room.

As her fingers had crept underneath the table to brush his thigh.

Oh, and how he had _leapt_ in shock, Edelgard remembers fondly, a smile quirking her mouth as she commands herself focus, leans over the most recent parchment now with quill and amplified intent to rule that evening, if only for just a moment. A consultant of foreign affairs had droned on, and Edelgard’s eyes had been on her retainer. Tangled in the complexity of that green gaze. Undone by the ragged composure she has become so expert at detecting therein as of late.

Because she had touched him out of greed, and Hubert’s eyes had been full of hunger in turn. And it had struck her as plainly, painfully wrong to be looked at in such a way in her Emperor’s armor at a tableful of the wizened, cantankerous fools that make up Adrestia’s primary leadership. A gaze better reserved for obscured, private balconies, perhaps. Or the cool comforts of her bed.

Edelgard’s fingers had lingered at the innermost seam of his left leg. In it, a fleeting promise of later, a clear communication translated in searing touch.

He will come to her quarters that evening. As he has come before.

It was not always that way—at times in the academy, they’d sat the obligatory feet apart lest their fellow students talk, the brush of his elbow against hers in the dead air of the midnight library her only consolation in otherwise abyssal longing. At times, they had readied for battle and Hubert’s long fingers had skimmed the bandages containing her old, sensitive scars to ensure their security. Perfunctory. Careful.

But as the world has dirtied, so too has the cautious line drawn between their stations.

And now, Edelgard awaits Hubert, entrusting in the figurative mountain of work at her left and the furnace he’s lit in her lower belly to keep her awake until he deems the time appropriate, the Keep quiet enough, to slip into her rooms. 

The fire burns low in the hearth; the logs whine and spit their defeat to the cool room beyond. Edelgard stands and lights three candles.

The rapper on her door sounds.

She knows how he will seem before he enters the door; even before their trysts, she has known Hubert long, known him well, known him _deeply,_ known his face to be kept drawn and careful and his fingers to curl and twist behind his spine in respect for her upon approach. And as he enters now, it is the same—he, a ghost of blacks and blues crossing her hearth, a moth to her cherry red flame.

(And she, burning for him, lusting for him all the same.)

It is only the look in his eyes that tells Edelgard he is not here for business; as the fire licks the last offerings of wood in the hearth so too does something sear in Hubert’s gaze. Edelgard takes a moment to study him before bidding him speak—her eyes travel those harsh, unforgiving cheekbones, that long nose. The narrow indentation of his waist.

Already, she is warm beneath his scrutiny.

“Hubert.”

“Emperor Edelgard,” he gives back. A cursory bow.

Ah, this game. Edelgard bites her lip to resist giving it a smile of recognition. How long they have demanded themselves this torment, how quick they are to revert back to it now. To speak to one another as though they are still academy students with a thick barrier of formality from which to chip away before they might feel the heat of one another’s blood. To play the obnoxious game of royal chicken and test who might be first to break.

—As though they have not coiled around one another, serpentine and wanton, in the hallowed enclave of Edelgard’s bedsheets. As though she has not tasted the sting of his teeth and he, the bite of her nails at his shoulders and down the length of his sharp spine. As though he has not fucked her until she can’t remember who she is any longer, nor the power she holds; that they might be anywhere in the world at all—would that they could, as long as they are together.

She wants him. She wants his slender lips along her neck and his fingers inside of her and she wants him begging her _El, El,_ but for now she will play his game if only for the torment of him, too, because she has thought about this particular evening long and hard for months and she, too, has a surprise for him.

Edelgard motions to the seat at her right, and Hubert complies.

“My. I see you’ve brought back quite the stack this evening,” he comments. She laughs in turn.

“Had I the assistance of my retainer, I may have been through with it quite some time ago.”

“Tonight’s duties far surpassed the importance of mere paperwork.” His voice is laden with a heavy disdain. The upward slide of his brow is oil-slick. “Nevertheless, do allow me to make apologies on his behalf.”

“See that you have him beheaded,” Edelgard suggests, fingers waving in the air. She is awarded with Hubert’s wry little smile.

And oh, how her blood sings.

To think on it now, many of their more intimate evenings have begun this way; with Hubert at her side, and the raw sting of Edelgard’s yearning between her legs. Tonight is no different. The hearth dies, and she shifts closer in her seat to the warmth of him.

And how warm he is.

A surprise at first, to discover that Hubert von Vestra resides amongst the living. To place her hand flat upon his bared chest and feel the thundering of his pulse, to look at his pants and see them tented and to understand that he, too, is capable of want. She remembers it ardently, potently, as though it were yesterday for how she cherishes the memory that virginal time. The first she can remember tasting his humanity. His fear.

Edelgard wonders, as she peers at him now, if he is still frightened of her. If this game compels him as it does her.

The hearth spits and dies, another victim in the toiling of Edelgard and Hubert and only them. And sometimes, Edelgard wants to stretch out her hands to it all—and sometimes it is towards a battlefield, towards a heap of dead Northern warriors, towards these bills and laws and battle tactics they need to confirm—and say, look at this, look at what we have done.

Look at what we have the power still to do.

But for tonight, she refrains, and turns back to the papers. She works, and relearns the sharp grate of Hubert’s gaze along her neck.

Blame the work through which she still must toil. Blame her love for her people as real as the blood that pumps through her veins, the way she’s sewn her own flesh to the vision of peace that she and Hubert had birthed between them in the dead of the academy’s night—blame the way her gut sings when Hubert is left waiting and watching her. They are still newer to all of this, and how Edelgard loves to test his limits. And how he allows her.

Her fingers, for the second time that day, trace the line of seam up his leg.

This time, she compels a moan from him, heady and surprised. It’s enough to cause her fingers pause before they drive up further. Edelgard reads, and her fingers press against the heat between his legs.

Untethered from that morning’s weight of company, Hubert shudders.

“Is this alright, Hubert?” She asks, quietly. She finds the shape of him amongst the folds of his trousers.

A flush is finding him, hot and raw across his cheekbones. “Yes.”

“Yes?” A lilt.

“I am yours, Lady Edelgard. You know why I have come here tonight.” Hubert’s tongue wets his lips. “To do with as you please—however you please.”

A little satisfied smile as she turns to face the breadth of him, the intensity in those green eyes enough to make a lesser woman pause. But not she. For Edelgard has known Hubert fiercely; known him intimately; known him for his best and loved him deeply for his worst. Where others might perceive him as beast, she sees man—where others might cower at his devotion, she knows to take it in stride.

And his acts of devotion, she has learned, do not cease with the removal of their clothes and titles.

She traces the heavy line of his erection through his pants and looks him in the eye, a dare that he focus elsewhere for even a moment. She hears the insistent scrape of his fingernails against the wooden chair—a flattery. He will not touch her until she grants permission, much as he might want it.

Edelgard leans forward, paperwork finally forgotten. The heat of their breaths mix in the narrowing space between them both.

She kisses him first. She always kisses him first. Their lips make a seam quickly broken for the warmth of tongue. And his fingers are in her hair, and it spills out from her crown and pulls against her scalp just _so_ and Edelgard is gasping in relief.

She’d desired to kiss him all day. If she’s perfectly frank with herself, she’s yearned for the chance to kiss him like this since their academy days, since his long fingers danced upon topographic maps to discuss troop movement and the light of the library candle in those stillwater eyes. Want. He’d taught her to want in those quiet corners of the library when the whole world had fallen asleep and it was only them both. To want her path, her title, her _revenge_ —the taste of him on her tongue.

“In my bed with you,” she tells him quietly, praying her own voice not shake. “In my bed, and without your clothes. You’ll wait.”

He laughs something ragged, _bemused._ “As you please, El.” 

His undressing is a thing of art, she’s thought in the past, and tonight is no different. He unties his cravat with the same careful grace that he uses when he touches her. His things come off in leathery strips of black; a beast shedding its flesh in preparation for night. And so it goes; an expanse of muscled ivory flesh is exposed to the cool bedroom air. His fingers, ravaged and blackened with the ruinous effects of his magicks. The length of his spine and the slabs of his shoulder blades as though cut from fine marble.

And it grips at Edelgard’s throat like the maddened hand of an enemy—the unquestionable beauty of him. In each languid movement and expanse of flesh, he is naught but an anchor to which only she is allowed to tether. There is a possession to it, an ugly, fierce need. The sort that would frighten Edelgard were she not well acquainted with the uglier parts of humanity.

Oh, but she is, and oh, how Hubert is _not_ amongst their number.

She will have him, she has decided, an idea positively months in the making. She will show her gratitude for his duties in a way he will only allow of her.

Edelgard’s argent hair tumbles down her back as she sets her crown upon the table.

Hubert is a sight on her bedclothes, long in limb and lithe in muscle and that inky black hair pressed back from his eyes—the better to evaluate her with, Edelgard suspects, and turns away from his bared body so as not to undermine her power with a blush. Instead. she gathers the shards of her composure that his nudity has seen fit to break and scatter. She stoops at her chest of drawers and finds what she is seeking: a simple paper box, weighted.

Within, it holds a device long and curiously soft to the touch, and leather straps to secure it around her own thighs. A toy given to her by a rather curious Dorothea a moon prior; a scandalous present passed from one to the other beneath the guise of an innocent teatime.

(“I can’t presume to know who you might use this on,” Dorothea had lied, eyes singing in bemusement for this next step in their blossomimng friendship, a promise that Edelgard simply _will_ be hearing about this little incident in the future. “But every woman should have one of these at her disposal—don’t you think?”)

Now, the box comes undone underneath Hubert’s long fingers, the straps and rubber cock exposed. From her position at the bedside, Edelgard can see the effect her desires have upon her lover; his erection brushes his belly, his cheeks ruddy as their gazes clash. A hiss comes from between his teeth. Genuine surprise.

“My, my,” Hubert finally says, although his tone has gone curiously hollow. He touches a metal bolt that sutures together two fine straps of black leather. “What is this?”

She laughs. “Really, Hubert. The idiot act hardly suits you.”

“Merely doing my best to diffuse the tension,” he tells her in turn. He touches at Edelgard’s cheek. “You wish to use this on me.”

Her eyes burn as they meet his. “Yes.” 

His finger descends the length of it, and Edelgard’s stomach twists.

“Fine,” he tells her.

She needn’t ask if he is certain. Hubert von Vestra does not lie, not to her.

It cinches around her smallclothes; the weight of it tugging her, too, forward into her lust. Hubert lays back upon the bedsheets all parts cut refractory glass and gnarled animal, and how she loves him for it, Edelgard thinks, fingers tracing a line of rib over the hollow dip of Hubert’s stomach. Would that she could, how might she worship him in turn, give him the parts of herself that she simply cannot for it is her country that needs her more, dedicate him her life.

She’s learned that together their blood runs hot, and tonight is certainly no different; Edelgard brushes against Hubert’s knee, and it is as though he burns her. The chilly Enbarr nights mean nothing when she has him to warm his bed. His body, his blood, his pleasure, for Edelgard alone.

She touches his cock, and he hisses. His fingers curl into the bedclothes beside his hips. A silver bead of fluid comes from the tip.

It is a madness she does not often allow herself, this want. The same madness that only strikes her on the battlefield against an enemy who sings for the bludgeoning from her axe. The sort that coats her tongue as her vision runs red with blood that is not hers; when Hubert’s dark magicks rip the life from thier foes.

And now, when she can touch him so simply and cause his breathing to stutter like this. As she thumbs a nipple and Hubert jolts as though burned. 

“You’ll need to prepare me,” he tells her through clenched teeth.

So she does.

Her fingers come away from a jar of medical lubricant gleaming and sticky. They press into him with intention. Hubert’s lips emerge from his teeth bitten and cherry red; a bead of sweat descends his forehead and sullies the bedding underneath—and she suddenly understands him to want her here, too.

And thus this game of theirs continues; he coaxes her, he exposes her to the darkest parts of the world. And so she devours them, hungry to stay at his side. To sink with Hubert. To shoulder half the burden of the weight he gladly assumes.

Lest one of them arrive at the gates of hell without the company of the other.

But there are no such thoughts now—later, she will reminisce of the duties that tether them to stones that lug them underwater as they swim for the safety of shore. Later she will think about the crown abandoned upon her desk and the warning of her surroundings lest she falter in an act too human for a woman of such status. For now, there is Hubert’s warmth. His blown eyes ringed in the cold color of frostbitten moss and his hair undone and how long, how hard, she has wanted the forevers neither of them can accept from the other. It is enough.

‘Stop,” he tells her, and works her fingers from him. He gapes, prepared and filthy. “It’s time you take me, El.”

In those dark corners of the library, Hubert von Vestra taught her that it is right to want the power to which she is entitled. In Edelgard’s bed, he continued their lessons.

She drives the cock into him, and the tension shatters.

He makes the wretched cry of a beast skewered by a hunter’s arrow. Edelgard drives back and forward again, a decisive rhythm. His fingers wind about her forearms and oh, how they hurt when his grip tightens.

 _Beauty._ Hubert’s head is thrown back; his neck stretches raw and exposed towards Edelgard’s mouth. Carefully, she presses her lips against the taut tendons. He groans.

“Is this alright?” She asks.

He nods in abandon. “More.”

She allows it. She drives the toy into him in a crippling pace, the pang of her lower hips indication she has not yet built up the muscles she will need to keep it up for very long. His fingers are free of their restraints of preamble. They slide along her jaw and neck and palm at the breasts hidden behind her smallclothes.

Edelgard has seen him bloodied. She has seen him fearful. She has seen him arms deep into the carcass of an enemy, she has seen him vile and ruinous and beyond the farthest reaches of humanity. She has knotted her fingers in his clothes and wrenched him back from that brink herself. Together they have been one another’s most trusted companions for as many years as Edelgard keeps beneath her belt and in such a time, she has thought to come to know Hubert, each part of him.

She’s wrong.

Lady Pleasure has debauched him. She has turned his flesh red and his fingers needy and painful into the flesh of Edelgard’s back. She draws tears from the corners of Hubert’s eyes. Frigid corpse no longer, Hubert is made living beneath Edelgard’s touch. Oh, has he always been this way?

He opens his eyes and in that searing glance she knows her answer. Would that he could, he would chisel away new continents himself beneath her cause.

He finishes in ropes of white that paint his chest and a wanton, strangled moan that slides down Edelgard’s spine like a cube of ice, and her elation fades as he too descends his high. Until there’s nothing but the both of them upon her ruined bedsheets; the heavy crown she will have to wrap taut around her head tomorrow morning. The stench of seed and sex.

Hubert collects himself. He lifts himself to his elbows and uses a handkerchief fished from a pocket of his coat to clean his belly. The toy comes out of him with a slick sound.

“El,” he begins, hoarse. He looks at her, and she is undone by the affection written in the premature lines across his face. “Edelgard. I—“

“I know.” Edelgard cuts him off. Her thumb touches his bottom lip. Tonight he has given enough of himself—she will not have him give that, too. “Hubert, I know.”

-

The early morning light comes in gray and lethargic, and Edelgard awakens to a bed cold. She sits up in the fluid motion of spilling argent hair.

He’s at her desk. Fully dressed, wicked and sharp and dark once more as though they’d shared nothing more last night than some trite words and suppressed smiles. And yet, even Hubert cannot keep his gaze from lingering as Edelgard stands to pull on a dressing gown, and she wouldn’t have it even if he could—that he adores her so privately, so tenderly, is a greater intimacy than what he’d allowed her do to him the night prior.

As she watches, Hubert presses his hair back from his eyes and dips his quill into the well. He taps it thrice to rid the excess ink and notates a rather grand document. A candle dripping a fountain of pearly wax dances in his movements. Edelgard wonders how long he has been awake—whether he had slept at all.

There is a rush of gratitude as she perceives him solid through the gray morning.

“You’ve made quite the progress on my mountain, Hubert,” she tells him finally. When the tension has thickened just enough that she cannot resist but break it.

He sends over one of those unique smiles reserved just for her. “With my neck on the line, Emperor Edelgard, it was the only logical course of action left.”

“Was it.” Her feet across the frigid early morning floor as she approaches. He’s sorted the work into his usual pilings; documents Edelgard need not waste her time on, and those that need her eyes.

She draws out a heavy seat laden with the Emperor’s decorations and sits. She takes her crown from the table and arranges it upon her head. And there is only a little lament for the return of this game of theirs, the game she has come to know so well, so intimately.

But Hubert had left her bed and dressed; he is the one who has started it again.

“Shall we get started?” She asks him, and leans towards the lit candle so that they might share the light.

**Author's Note:**

> Say hi on [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/iliawrites)


End file.
